If you had stopped by last week, you would have seen me sprawled out on my kitchen floor, surrounded by stacks of cookbooks and festooned with sticky note flags. I was collecting recipes for next week’s big Passover feast, and the perfect dessert was eluding me.
As holiday meals go, the Seder is an especially demanding one, requiring a long list of dietary do’s and don’ts, enough courses to accompany four glasses of wine, and an abundance of crowd-pleasing food. By the time dessert is finally served, everyone is hankering for a transcendent finale.
I kept flipping back to this recipe from a cookbook that has come through meal after meal, Ottolenghi: The Cookbook. Though I’ve never been to any of the four wildly … [Read more...]

Since one of my dearest gal pals has a birthday this week, I think I’ll bake her a cake. But it can’t be just any cake. If you knew my friend, you would agree. It has to be festive…fudgy…a bit naughty. And memorable.
When I searched online for chocolate cakes, there were over six million recipes, each claiming to be the moistest, dreamiest one of them all. As I scanned through the myriad of ingredients, the word mayonnaise caught my eye. At first I winced, but as I gave it more thought, it made brilliant sense. Mayonnaise: an emulsion of yolks, vinegar, oil, and salt; a pantry staple. As it turns out, the idea was coined by some clever homemakers during World War II, when eggs and butter were in short … [Read more...]

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Seasonal Produce Charts

Try these handy charts we found on the CUESA (Center for Urban Education and Sustainable Agriculture) website. Print out copies and keep them taped to the inside of a kitchen cupboard so you can reference them often and enjoy all the fresh produce at your local farmers market!